Calan Archer conjured a lightning dragon. Yan Shoumei gathered blood madra in her palms, but didn’t summon Crusher. Brother Aekin covered himself in his Enforcer technique, taking on the vague aspect of the Wandering Titan.

The two remaining Redmoon Overlords summoned their Blood Shadows around their weapons: a spear and an axe. The one he’d downed had carried a sword.

Nice of them to have such a variety; it made them easy to tell apart.

Eithan pulled out his scissors. “Well,” he said, “isn’t this an interesting situation in which I find myself.”

Sophara glowered at him. An Enforcer technique hummed through her, her shield drifted over her head, and her liquid whip pooled at her side.

None of them attacked him, which showed unusually keen instincts on their side. They couldn’t have pierced his veil, but they still knew something was off.

The Sage of Red Faith took a bloody finger from his mouth. “How did you advance so quickly? Even with our Monarch providing you with resources, it should have taken you much longer.”

“Well, I wasn’t competing, so I didn’t have to adhere to tournament rules anymore,” Eithan said. And then, since the proverbial cat was out of the bag, he released his veil.

His Archlord power covered the entire tower.

As the Sage of a Thousand Eyes had said, reaching Archlord had never been a problem for him. It had only been a question of resources.

And Reigan Shen was a cat of his word. He’d promised to sponsor Eithan’s advancement, and his deliveries had been prompt. Though no doubt he’d expected his first shipment to last Eithan for years.

Well, Eithan hoped to surprise him many more times in the future.

Of course, that would require him to survive.

Archlord had been trivial, since he’d started with the requisite insight, but Sage was still a different matter entirely.

“I didn’t ask you why,” the Blood Sage said irritably, “I asked you how. Children, go upstairs. Arelius, you move.”

A great pressure squeezed Eithan from every direction as space itself tried to move him.

But he pushed back.

It was a harder task than he would have preferred.

“I…don’t think…I will.”

The Blood Sage’s working peaked, then collapsed.

Eithan’s outer robe fluttered before it fell back down. He remained right where he was.

The Blood Sage chewed on his knuckle for a moment, then spoke another command. “Die.”

This time, the working of will was accompanied by a Ruler technique. The blood aura in Eithan’s body twisted up, seizing his heart.

Eithan crumpled, pushing with his soulfire and his madra, fighting the aura with every ounce of the willpower he’d trained every day for as long as he could remember.

By the time the fit passed, he and the Blood Sage were alone, and battle was beginning upstairs.

“They probably could have gotten me,” Eithan said, his breath still coming heavily. “Thank you for holding them back.”

The Blood Sage’s head tilted all the way to one shoulder, then to the other. “I’m going to study you.”

“I’ll sign a portrait for you,” Eithan said pleasantly.

Then their spirits clashed.

Lindon stood, shaking, on the empty half of the roof.

People shouted urgent questions, but Lindon stood and scooped up the scripted stone spike. It was just a teleportation anchor. It had guided them here; it hadn’t taken them anywhere else.

The Blood Sage had done that.

[Couldn’t have been far!] Dross said desperately. [We can find them!]

Not with the chaos all around them. Lindon couldn’t stretch his spiritual perception far enough to sense anything clearly.

“Tell Fury,” Lindon instructed.

[You, uh, you really want to distract him right now?]

“Do it!”

Dross sent him a message, but they didn’t hear anything back. With nothing else to do, Lindon swept the empty space with his perception. Maybe the Blood Sage had left a trail.

He didn’t expect to find anything, so he was filled with surprise when he actually did.

Not a trail, but a…bump…in the middle of the air.

It reminded him of the spatial cracks that had begun to appear when Ghostwater crumbled, but those had been visible to the naked eye. This one he could barely sense, even with his perception right on it.

Desperately, he pushed against it. Just as he had when trying to resist Fury, or when he’d held on to Dross.

Something shifted, but he couldn’t tell what. He pushed harder.

The invisible bump in the air collapsed, stretching into a crack. If he released the pressure, the crack disappeared, and the bump returned.

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder, but he shook them off, cycling pure madra and pushing with everything he had.

Pride was there, and the rest of his team. Eithan and Mercy were there.

He was going there too.

It felt like his spirit was going to tear in half, but finally the crack deepened. It widened into a rift the length of his hand, and the edges shone blue.

But with all his concentration, that was as far as he could get.

Eithan’s Hollow Armor formed an actual suit of armor. An observer could see a faint, transparent helmet over his head and plates covering his body.

The formless version, the layer of madra that covered his skin, wasn’t even comparable to the performance of this complete technique.

And even so, the Blood Sage slashed through it with a Forged claw.

Eithan deflected a flying hawk of blood with his Hollow King’s Mantle, which now resembled a sweeping cloak the size of the room. It swept up the Striker technique, hurling it back.

Though the hawk crashed into the Sage and did very little.

A follow-up slash from Red Faith’s claws breached the gap in Eithan’s armor and split open the skin of his chest. Only Eithan’s reflexes kept that from including his rib cage.

He Forged his armor again and continued adding another star to the crown over his head. When the Hollow King’s Crown was complete, he would have a further weapon against the Sage.

But he was exhausted and bleeding, while the Sage looked fresh as a…well, the Sage always somewhat resembled a skeleton with skin, but he was uninjured.

Despite the best efforts of Eithan’s scissors.

“You know I’m not going to kill the children myself,” the Blood Sage said. “You will have worked that out because I transported them here instead of killing them on the rooftop.”

“Unless my children beat yours,” Eithan pointed out. “You’re here in case something goes wrong.”

“That isn’t what’s happening.”

That was true.

Other than the Overlord Eithan had ruined with so much spiritual damage that even his Remnant had been destroyed, there were no deaths on the Blood Sage’s team.

All the blood drawn had been on Eithan’s side.

Then Eithan saw something behind him. A flare of blue. The Blood Sage sensed it at the same time he did, but Eithan was closer.

Someone was trying to drill through.

And Eithan knew who.

As the Blood Sage tried to force the rift shut, Eithan joined his will to Lindon’s.

The hole in space tore open.